All the young cattle were weighed recently now that they have all been housed. The heifers ranged from a high of 418kg to a low of 230kg for a late calf that got a bad start. Overall, I was a little disappointed with them although they had been fasting since the day before as I was also dosing them when they were going through the chute.

The plan is to get all the ones that are suitable for breeding over 400kg by the time they reach 15 months of age. I’m unsure as what to do with the rest yet but I’ll probably try to finish most of them off grass at 18 to 20 months next autumn.

In 2012, I held on to the five lightest weanling heifers as they were a poor trade at the time. They were stored over the winter and put to grass last year. Since housing at the end of November, they have been getting 5kg/day of ration and good quality silage. They are now as good as finished at an average weight of 550kg – not a spectacular performance but they had a lot to contend with between the summer of 2012 and the spring of 2013. All in all, it’s worked out better than giving them away 14 months ago.

The bulls weighed an average of 445kg at 10 to 11 months. The heaviest bunch that are on ad-lib meal are now averaging 554kg – up from 493kg when last weighed five weeks earlier. This amounts to a gain of 1.75kg/lw/day. They are eating 11kg of meal with 74dmd silage and straw ad lib, which is better than I had originally budgeted for. Hopefully, they’ll maintain this level of gain until they get close to the 16-month limit.

Last weekend, I had the honour of hosting a group of young farmers from Mayo Macra na Feirme for a farm walk which, to be honest, really only consisted of a look around the yard due to the poor weather. I’m not sure if I should take comfort from the fact that they didn’t ask too many awkward questions but I think they were happy enough with what they saw and that they each found something of interest to take home which might be of use to them in future.

If anything, the main message I was trying to get across was to do their homework and base all decisions on their own figures, not what they see someone else doing. I explained the margin over the cost of feed for the liveweight gain on the bulls and why I made decisions like holding on to the ram lambs versus selling them as stores last autumn.

Potential

Each decision must be carefully analysed to ensure that it has sufficient potential to be profitable. There is no point or fun for that matter in being a busy fool. There’s certainly no shortage of individuals – both salesmen and buyers – lurking about waiting for the first opportunity to exploit a naive young farmer.

As usual, the real debate kicked off afterwards over a cup of tea with numerous random topics which varied from ways of preventing footrot in housed ewes to the age of a timber trussed hayshed. As is the norm at the moment whenever a group of farmers get together, it isn’t long until the subject of CAP reform pops up in conversation.

The spin placed on the recent announcement was certainly lost on this bunch. There were no signs of joy or adulation on these young farmers’ faces. As one prospective young farmer put it: “It all sounds great but a top-up is not much use if you can’t access the land to claim it.”